For the Better
by Jyuune
Summary: Nyota meets with Spock Prime to have a discussion about lost pasts and futures. One shot, established S/U, allusions to S/U in TOS.


**Author's Note**: Another one of those Nyota meets Spock Prime and has a chit chat stories. I decided to play around with the whole " traveling into the past and affecting the future " paradox if one is trapped in the past with a changed future. Some illusions to S/U in the TOS universe.

The year is 2268, which would be TOS S2... which would then explain the "bump" ;)

* * *

He looked like him but he wasn't him.

That was the first thought that crossed Nyota Uhura's mind when she first met the old Vulcan on the veranda of his new home. He was far from home, a century away to be exact, now left to spend his remaining days watching a life he had once experienced; though now that life is no longer the same that he remembered. She was one of the living examples of those changes.

Nyota wondered what it was like to be stranded in a strange but familiar land. How do you cope with such a reality? Knowing that the world that you once knew was forever changed by something you did. That the future you once knew now ceases to exist, only to be rewritten in ways that contradict a lifetime's work. She could only think of what her life could have been had this Spock from the future not interfered with the timeline.

Would she still have been on the Enterprise? In Starfleet? Would she have met her Spock? Would they have married? Would she have gone into communications or would she have went into lecturing? So many questions left unanswered she was beginning to wonder how Jim Kirk managed to put aside his animosity towards their Spock and try to rekindle a friendship thought impossible to obtain. She knew that the two had met and she also knew that Kirk had known of things from this elder Vulcan's time that he was trying to rectify.

Did she want to know? Nyota didn't know.

" She was like you in many ways and in some not like you."

The aged wispy voice of the elder Vulcan brought Nyota out of her thoughts. She looked at him from where she stood on the veranda – he was seated in a chair, looking out into the new Vulcan capitol that was still under much construction. He wore heavy black robes, which made him look smaller in contrast. So old, so frail… a shadow of what he once was. She's looking at a future that she will probably never have the chance to see in her own lifetime.

" What?" Nyota asks quietly. She doesn't move from the opened entrance to his home. The wind blows, cool and dry, but it still isn't enough to make her comfortable in the heavy Vulcan robes she's wearing. She doesn't have to but she does to honor her husband's traditions.

" Your counterpart… your other self. The Uhura I knew." He turns his head from the scenery to look at her. " You probably want to know. Do you not?"

" I don't mind…" Do I?

" She was smart, lively, and a beautiful woman. A professional and dedicated to her craft." He pauses for a brief moment. It's like he's trying to recall fading memories; maybe they are. What a scary thought. " Talented beyond imagination. Such an amazing singer… she learned to play the lyre quickly. Not many non-Vulcans can. She was, I must say, one of a kind."

" You speak of her as if you two were…"

" No, we weren't." He sighs. This Spock was so uncharacteristically different from her own. Emotional? Not quite…

" Did she ever find someone?"

" Not that I can recall. She was dedicated to her career." He looked back at the city.

" I see…" Nyota looks off at the city as well. " That must have been lonely."

" Perhaps, but I can not say if it was or if it was not. But, she always had a smile on her face..." He reaches for his cup of, now cold, tea that rested on the table next to him. " … She was strong."

A silence set itself between them on the veranda. The gentle sound of the chimes rung in absence of the conversation between the two individuals – connected through a bizarre set of events that changed so many lives. Nyota observes him from where she stood. He looks like a ghost to her, a ghost from another world that simply does not belong in this world. He lives, separated from everyone else, away from the city in his small home. It's bare and holds no personality; he has nothing of his world to adorn the walls with. A man lost in time. Is it punishment? Retribution? Nyota could not figure out how she would call his prison. He brings the cup to his lips and slowly takes a sip from it.

" The longer I stay in this time… The more I loose of my time." He said as he placed his cup back on the table. " I have realized that time has slowly been repairing itself, wiping itself clean of any inconsistencies that could interfere with it's natural progression. I am, essentially, ceasing to exist."

" Are you scared?"

He smiles. It's so strange yet it fits him perfectly, " Fear is a human emotion and I am half human. So, I must be… half scared." He looks at Nyota and shakes his head. " I apologize, I still have yet to understand the complexities of human jokes."

Nyota chuckles lightly, " Neither has Spock."

" Then I can say we will never understand it." Spock says lightly with mirth. He looks past the city, to the horizon, where the setting sun is nothing more than a slit of light across the barren landscape of a planet that was nothing more than a heart breaking reminder of their home world. " I look at it as the universe giving me mercy. I will continue to exist without having to suffer with the memories of my old life. I will cease to be Spock in this world but I will live on as someone else."

" I don't know if I could handle that. Knowing that my life is being wiped away with each passing day. Friends, family… all gone."

" My friends and family no longer exist, Nyota." His voice is low, hoarse, and solemn. This Spock was not afraid to embrace his emotional side if it required him to do so. He wasn't an emotional person… he was tired. " I changed that. My mother is gone, my planet is gone, my life and memories before I met James Kirk is now gone. I, as they will say, stepped on too many butterflies. I rather live my life without being constantly reminded of the crimes I committed. I spent eighty years of my life regretting something I did to a close friend of mine, I do not want to experience that regret again."

Nyota slowly approaches the old Spock. She stood behind him and placed her hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently. He reached up and patted her hand before she slipped her hand away and rested them on the back of his chair. The sky is now adorned with the colors of muted oranges, mellow purples, and the slight illuminations of gold against yellow clouds. The stars are twinkling above their heads, faintly, but soon will become a spectacle in the sky. The stars always looked beautiful from the surface of a planet.

" I have done what I could to fix my errors and I am pleased with the outcomes, but I am also glad that this time line was able to come together in ways that my own failed to do. I am glad to know that my counterpart chosen things that I denied myself on for sake of my own… inner strife." He slowly stands up, his advance age all the apparent, and smoothes the wrinkles from his robes. " I am… happy to be able to witness these events."

Nyota placed a hand over the slight swell of her stomach and looks down at it. She understood what he had meant. It had been ten years since the events that ended in the destruction of a planet by a troubled Romulan from a future that no longer exists and this Vulcan's arrival into their time. Ten years of that nagging thought of _what could have been_. Now, it is _what could be_.

" You showed Jim the past, didn't you." Nyota said as Spock walked back into his home. Behind them, the Vulcan city's lights were slowly coming to life. Spock stopped and turned around.

" Yes, I did… In an attempt to rectify a wrong."

" I want to see… for myself… what her life was like." Spock raised an eyebrow. So much like her husband.

Silently he walked over to her and raised his hand over her face. She closed her eyes, swallowed any fears, and braced herself for his mind to intrude upon her own. The feeling of warm fingertips brushing against her temple, cheek, and chin sent a shiver down her spine. Suddenly, she heard those all too familiar words before her mind was flooded with the images and memories of a time much like her own but so _different_.

She saw herself through his eyes. She felt his emotions for her. The slight embarrassment from when she would tease him, the fluttering of a heart when their fingertips would brush against each other ever so delicately as she took his lyre from him, the pain when they began to drift apart; she felt and saw it all. Then, before she fell deeper into his mind, he broke the meld. She opened her eyes and gasped from the emotional transference. Nyota brought a shaking hand to her eyes and wiped away the tears that threatened to fall.

" There's more to why you want to forget…" Nyota whispered. Spock didn't reply. " … Thank you."

" It was within your right to know."

Nyota only nodded as she watched him disappear into the darkness of his home. She pulled out one of the chairs at the table and sat down. To live a life like that… Uhura couldn't imagine her life without those she loved in it. It was so tragic to experience that feeling of dancing around emotions and feelings for the sake of job and duty. It was depressing to know that her counterpart achieved so much but sacrificed her personal life in obtaining her goals. She dedicated her entire life to Captain James T. Kirk and the Enterprise.

The elder Vulcan was right, there were some things in her life that turned out for the better. It made her appreciate her life more. Nyota subconsciously brought her hand to her stomach and began rubbing it. Yes, this was for the better.


End file.
